transient

There came a time when she stopped and said, in a voice barely louder than a whisper, "I don't know who I am any more." And he shrugged his shoulders and said, "You're exactly who I want you to be." /// Work in progress.

Submitted:Sep 21, 2011
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There came a time when she stopped and said, in a voice barely
louder than a whisper, "I don't know who I am any more."

And he shrugged his shoulders and said, "You're exactly who I
want you to be."

***

Her mother used to tell her stories on rainy nights, when she
couldn't go to sleep because the lightning warped the trees'
silhouettes into something wicked; there were castles and
kingdoms and beautiful princesses, and she would have to strain
to hear that soft southern drawl, fighting against the thunder
and the pitter-patter of the rain against the window, fogged and
distorting the view of outside. Her mother's whispers would pool
in her ears, and they were steady and constant and didn't stop
until her waxy eyelids would tug over her soft-boiled green eyes.

***

She met him at a party, and he was gorgeous in everyway that a
boy should be. She learned that he too was a transient soul:
prone to tattered jeans and flannel shirts, to hard liquor and
cigarettes, to shaggy hair and scruffy beards, to everything her
mother warned her against. He was her perfect alternative prince
charming, a poster-boy for the soul mate she had always dreamed
of and that night when they made love, she knew it was love at
first sight.

***

Sometimes when the night was still and quiet, and his breath was
tickling the curve of her neck, she eyed the darkness that
settled around them like a cloak and listened to the apartment
breathe; the carpet was airing out, last night's dinner was
congealing on the stovetop, and the digital alarm clock on the
desk flashed bright red numbers that cycled by, like a soundtrack
on repeat, the same numbers she'd watched a week before, and a
week before that.

***

Her mother sometimes read stories from the Bible, and she never
liked these as much as she did the princess stories. They were
dark and foreboding, about serpents with sly tongues and trees of
knowledge and forbidden fruit. They were concrete, solid, never
changing, and they felt oppressive in the night, and in her
dreams, she would quiver and cringe at their mercies.

***

"My name's Jenna," she had told him, rosy-cheeked - shy. And
there was a part of him that was nothing but ill-intent, but at
the same time, there was a part of him that was charmed, that was
gentlemanly, and that part smirked and brushed his fingers
suggestively against hers.